


The Truth and All Its Consequences

by ThisIsMyDesignHannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (mentions of), Blood, Blood and Violence, Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Communication, Deception, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Established Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Loves Will, It's not encephalitis ;P, Kissing, Lack of Communication, M/M, Masturbation, Masturbation in Shower, Memory Loss, Mild Sexual Content, Murder, Murder Husbands, Naked Cuddling, Nudity, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Post-Season/Series 03, Radiance Anthology, Will Loves Hannibal, Will and Hannibal in Cuba, Will's becoming, lots of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13105833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisIsMyDesignHannibal/pseuds/ThisIsMyDesignHannibal
Summary: Will wakes up alone. Covered in someone else’s blood. He has no idea who’s it is or what he’s done. Panic.In the blink of an eye, Will is forced to confront himself and his violence, his becoming. And what is Hannibal’s place in all of this? Will must finally come to terms with questions he and Hannibal have left unanswered as they try to navigate their new life together. Will all the things they have left unsaid leave their future hanging in the balance? Do secrets and silence always mean betrayal? Or will they finally have to choose the truth and all its consequences.My piece for the Radiance Anthology <333





	The Truth and All Its Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to my amazing beta [fragile-teacup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrs_Gene_Hunt/pseuds/fragile-teacup) !

 

_This can’t be happening. Not again._

Will Graham’s consciousness had a hole in it. Again.

_No. Please. Not now. I’m not ready._

One second he had been in bed trying to sleep, Hannibal’s body curled around him as always, protective and possessive… and then he was simply… here  —  standing in their guest bathroom down the hall, staring wide-eyed into the full-length mirror as though he had simply blinked and the world had shifted around him.

And he was covered in blood.

His hands and forearms were coated with it, dark and sticky. The front of his T-shirt was soaked and molded to his chest. Blood painted his face and throat, tiny droplets merging into seamless red. He could taste its coppery sheen on his tongue, telling him this was not a dream.

To his surprise, he could feel himself swelling at the front of his bloody pants — tendrils of lingering arousal heavy in his limbs, warring with his fear. His heartbeat surged and hammered in his temples. No, this was not a dream. He was here. Alone.

Covered in blood that wasn't his.

_Hannibal. Where is Hannibal..._

Will’s heart stuttered in his chest as he stumbled out of the bathroom’s open door, his bad shoulder slamming into the door-frame in his panic. He didn’t feel it. He couldn’t breathe. Rushing headlong down the dark hallway towards their bedroom, his feet felt far away and uncoordinated, surprisingly quiet on the old wooden floorboards. The bedroom door seemed acres away and getting further. His mind was screaming at him… _where is_ _he what did you do what did you do what did you do…_

Finally reaching the bedroom, Will pulled up short in the doorway, Hannibal’s name dying in his throat. He could just make out his shape in the deep dark — a familiar hump in the bed, motionless under the dark sheet. Hannibal never slept this soundly. Never. Will couldn’t move. A scream was bubbling up in his throat. 

_No. No no no no no._

But then Hannibal’s body shifted, one arm snaking out to probe Will’s empty side of the bed — shattering the impossible tension with a cat-like stretch. Will’s relief was so complete, his knees felt like they would buckle.

_Did you really think you could have hurt him?_

Will didn’t want to know the answer to that question. What he wanted was to run to Hannibal's side and shake him awake — to beg him for help, for clarity, for comfort… but his feet stayed rooted to the floor, paralysed, unable to will himself to move even an inch closer. If he took even one more step, there would be no going back. This would all be real. Hannibal's eyes would open, those amber depths drinking in the site of him, frantic and urgent and bloody. Hannibal would know what he had done. He would see.

_No… I'm not ready…_

Will didn't know what would come after that… only that _something_ would have to, something that would shatter his hard-won ability to pretend that they could ever have just started over — that he could ever simply ignore the bloody Pandora's box they had opened that night on the bluff. The fragile cocoon they had wrapped around themselves was cracking, and he wasn't ready to face what might emerge.

_Goddammit, you knew something like this would happen eventually…_

But standing there in the doorway, Will couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Poised at the brink, toes literally on the threshold, he felt like he was outside his body, his mind loosed from its moorings and cast adrift in a treacherous sea. He wanted so badly to believe this was all just another bloody dream…

 _You can't hide from yourself forever, Will_.

Sometimes the voice in his head still sounded like Hannibal…sometimes he wondered if the opposite were true.

_Do you hear me echoing through your mind, Hannibal? Do we share even that?_

“Will?”

 _Hannibal_ … _please… I’m not ready… not yet…_

Will allowed that sense of unreality to buffer him as he chose to defy the one thing he knew he needed, the one thing he knew he should do. Instead of going to Hannibal’s side, letting him see the bloody evidence of what he’d so obviously done, Will simply drew back from the open door, hiding himself in shadow. When he finally spoke, Will's voice sounded alien to him — quiet, soothing, impossibly calm — the lie too comfortable in his mouth…

“I’m right here, Hannibal. Go back to sleep. That coffee you made is keeping me up. I’m just going to go have a long, hot shower... It’s nothing. I'm fine. Go back to sleep.”

The pause was interminable, sitting heavy in the air like vapour. Maybe Hannibal wasn’t really awake at all? But no, Hannibal slept like a predator, and nothing was ever more sure to wake him than Will’s absence from their bed.

_Why doesn’t he say something?_

Will counted his breaths as he waited, trying to keep calm. He was just about to begin his retreat when Hannibal’s voice froze him in his tracks.

“Come back to bed when you’re finished.”  It was said simply, Hannibal’s voice rough with sleep.

Will couldn’t leave fast enough. He grunted something non-committal and turned to go, but Hannibal’s voice followed him.

“Oh and Will…thank you for using the guest bath. I’d be tempted to join you if you were here in ours.”

_He knows._

“Hannibal…I…”

“I thought you wanted me to go back to sleep, Will.”

_He doesn’t know._

“I do… I… just… love you.”

Another interminable pause. Will hated himself then… that he could use those words to lie, words he could so rarely say at all…

_What am I doing?_

He hated how hard it was for him to tell Hannibal what he meant to him. Because he did… love him… Will knew it in his bones. He loved Hannibal so much it felt like a fire burning in his chest — all-consuming and entire. The fact that they could share long nights of staggering intimacy, but he could still barely manage to meet the man’s eye to say “I love you” felt almost… shameful. One more stick on the fire of insidious inadequacy Will couldn’t help but feel in the burning glow of Hannibal’s unfailing devotion. Just one more source for that creeping guilt he tried so hard to ignore.

Still so much guilt… for so many reasons.

_You think lying to him now will make you feel any better? About this?_

“I love you too, Will.” Hannibal’s quiet voice startled him back to himself. “Come back to me soon.” It sounded muffled by the pillow, as though he was already half-asleep.

Will paused only a second longer before retreating, pulling the bedroom door closed with his hand buried in his pants pocket — there wasn’t a square inch of his shirt that wasn’t covered in blood, and his hands were sticky with it. That done, he quickly flicked on the hallway light, checking for signs of blood on his way back to the bathroom. Miraculously, he found only a single hand-print, standing out in grotesque relief on the corner of the wall just outside the bathroom. The bathroom itself was another story. Bloody hand-prints streaked the sink and mirror. The door-frame fared no better. He set to work as fast as possible with an old towel, beginning outside the bathroom and working his way in. Nervous sweat stung his eyes — the smell of adrenaline mingling with the coppery smell of the blood, disturbingly familiar and oddly… enticing.

The voice in his head drummed at him insistently. _What did you do? Why can’t you remember? Who did you… whose blood is it? If Hannibal finds out… that you… without him… if he finds out, everything will… change._

Will didn’t know what to think. He didn’t have any answers and he didn’t want them. Not yet. Fear loomed large over him, hazy and unfocused. His brain recoiled from it. He couldn’t think clearly. It was too big, too much, too...

_Stop. Just… clean first._

By the time he was sure the hall and bathroom would pass should Hannibal get up to come find him, his adrenaline was burning out, leaving him numb and dazed. He finally turned his attention to himself. His clothes were stiffening as the blood dried. He turned the hot water in the shower on full, and set to work removing each piece of bloody clothing, methodically dropping them onto the already filthy towel. _Evidence_. His body felt stiff with fatigue, muscles quivering, movements agonizingly slow. Finally undressed, he shoved the bloody bundle inside a garbage bag found under the sink and threw it into the corner by the toilet.

Completely naked now, he stared at himself in the mirror, mesmerized — even without his clothes he was still covered in blood. _So much blood._ His skin registered how it cracked and pulled where it had begun to dry, the wet slide of it where it had not. The sensations were almost... sensual.

The world was beginning to feel mercifully far away as exhaustion crept over him. Muted. He wanted nothing more than for this all to be a dream. His heartbeat thrummed loud and hypnotic in his ears — mind drifting as steam filled the room, a ghost-world transformation, indistinct, nebulous, full of muffled questions. He watched himself disappear in the mirror. Fog rolling in. The waves. The blade. Flesh. Breath. Blood in the moonlight...

Will started and gasped, half-returning to himself, shaking his head to try and clear it…

_What the hell… Was that a memory?_

He tried to focus, but he felt like he was trying to move through water. The room was full of steam now… blood that had dried becoming liquid again against his skin. Will watched as a bead became a drop, then a crimson trail, running down the center of his chest, his stomach… he watched as its path was disrupted by the scar across his belly, sending a thrill straight to his groin. He dimly registered that he was hard again, impossibly so, but shock seemed far away… and that trail of blood…it felt like Hannibal’s fingers…so light…tracing his scar…

_Fuck. Just get in the shower._

Will couldn’t think until he relieved the sudden desire that that gripped him, working himself roughly, forehead pressed against the tile, the hot water scalding his back as the blood ran in rivulets down his skin. His mind beat out a staccato of jumbled, disjointed images, bloody and erotic, the only constant Hannibal’s presence — his hands, the waves, his mouth, a knife, his eyes, blood, breath, flesh… Hannibal… _Hannibal_.

Will finished gasping, stifling a groan behind clenched teeth, knees buckling — he sat down heavily on the floor of the shower and let the water pummel his skin, blood pooling around him before being drained away.

His mind felt clearer now. Well, not clear exactly, but at least he was sure that he wasn’t dreaming. He peeked outside the shower to see the dark lump of the garbage bag squatting real and undeniable, a stark accusation, insinuating its banal reality. The blood might be cleaned away but he still felt dirty. A nebulous shame was settling upon him, complex and ill defined, insidious and permeating.

G _oddammit, you sure as hell know why you_ should _feel ashamed. You just killed someone. Without Hannibal. You covered it up. Without Hannibal. First you hid this from him and now you’re jerking off in the shower to some pseudo memory while he’s sleeping in the next room. What the hell are you doing?!_

It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d done mental battle with his defective conscience. But talking to himself now felt… strange… a combination of betrayal and comfort. The guilt screaming at him from inside his own head was almost soothing in its familiarity. It had been a long time since he’d let his mind worry over questions of conscience and complicity.

Those first weeks after their… fall… from the bluff — they seemed like a lifetime ago. He had made a choice then. He had chosen Hannibal. He had chosen to look forward relentlessly ever since, without sparing a single glance over his shoulder to see if the past had followed him here to Cuba, as if looking back would turn him into a pillar of salt.

Will squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drown out the icy fear that gripped him. Huffing steaming water from his lips with a heavy sigh, he dragged shaky palms down his face, cradling his head in his hands.

_Think goddammit. What’s the last thing you remember?_

He remembered getting in bed, Hannibal’s arms curling around him, pulling him close — the familiar feel of his chest pressing into his back, his breath warm and comforting against his ear. It was always like that and Will never minded. Hannibal would hold fast to him — sometimes curled against his back, sometimes hugging him to his chest — but always tightly, as though he was afraid something would snatch Will away from him while he slept.

_Yeah, well… something did._

The thought caused Will’s breath to hitch in his chest. Suddenly Hannibal felt entirely too far away — in every conceivable way — and Will’s heart felt like it was breaking. He needed him. Even if he was lying to him, he needed to lie next to him.

He couldn’t get out of the shower fast enough, drying himself quick and rough, his skin singing beneath the towel, red and raw from the hot water. In the haze of the steamy mirror he looked as though he was still stained with blood.

Will threw only a cursory glance around the bathroom before he left it, shoving the garbage bag full of bloody clothes and towels under the sink. He would deal with it tomorrow. Or he wouldn’t.

 _Just tell him._ He didn’t know what he wanted anymore _._ _I can’t…not yet._

All he knew was that he needed to go back to bed. He needed Hannibal’s arms around him, his tether, holding him tight in the world that they had made for each other, _of_ each other. Will needed this all to feel like a bad dream.

_That’s not fair and you know it._

Will padded naked back to the bedroom, steps quickening as he went, chased by an impending sense of loss. He couldn’t get into bed fast enough, roughly ripping back the sheet and falling in against Hannibal’s chest, uncaring that it would wake him. The relief was immediate — strong arms encircling him, pulling him close, the deep rumble in Hannibal’s chest as he hummed his contentment to have Will cradled against him once again. This was home, and Will felt like he was losing his grip on it.

“You’ve come back to me then?” Hannibal purred into the top of his head before placing a kiss on his forehead.

Both the truth and the lie hung precipitously on Will’s tongue. Neither would need much of a push. What could he possibly say that wouldn’t cause everything to come crashing down? Unable to choose, Will simply nodded quietly against Hannibal’s chest and clung tighter. Hannibal’s embrace tightened deliciously in response.

In the dark, Hannibal’s presence was all encompassing — the familiar slow cadence of his breath, the smell of his skin, his body pressed hot against him. Even now, the feel of Hannibal’s fingers running lazily through his hair sent conflicting currents of comfort and desire through his body. Will truly wanted nothing more than this, simply this — the two of them, together. Frustrated tears pricked at the backs of his eyes. He had tried so hard to leave everything else behind, that old conflict — to allow both that _thing_ inside him and that old familiar guilt to drown in the waters of the roiling Atlantic.

_Honeymoon is over Will. You can’t run forever._

Resentment spiked hot inside him. Once again his moorings were built on sand. They had built this fragile new life for themselves on the backs of words left unsaid… on choices and decisions postponed, subjects left for another day. _Does this have to be any different?_ But he had known this time would come. The world was re-insinuating itself. _He_ was re-insinuating himself.

_Just try to remember what you did._

Will took a deep, steadying breath. Hannibal’s fingers had stilled in his hair, muscles relaxing, breath deepening. _Please, just go back to sleep._ Will closed his eyes and tried to think back to the day they’d spent, trying to give his memory the room it needed to rise to the surface.

He’d felt restless and agitated most of the afternoon… at least during the time they had spent in town, combing the secret back rooms of Havana’s ‘markets’ for decent dinner ingredients. Hannibal had been busy ingratiating himself with the locals ever since they had arrived in Cuba, keen to gain access to whatever black market ingredients he could hope to find in this communist country, where specialty products posed an inherent philosophical quagmire.

He’d been churlish with Hannibal since they’d left the house, alternately sullen and sharp — one moment frustrated that Hannibal didn’t seem to care how much he obviously wanted to be at home, the next irritated by how solicitous he was being.

_“I thought perhaps we could go to the ballet tomorrow night, Will. They’re dancing The Firebird, which I think you might truly enjoy.”_

_“You just want to get me into that godforsaken tux again. Forgive me for not wanting to mime civility to the Havana glitterati.”_

_“Well then, I may have finally found a place to purchase some decent butter. Perhaps I could make us a nice lobster dinner instead… would you like that?”_

_“Cook whatever the hell you want, Hannibal. Just get what you came for so we can leave.”_

The memory of these exchanges, and many more, made his cheeks flush against Hannibal’s chest. He had been insufferable, and Hannibal had done his best to pretend everything was fine. As always. Ultimately Will had been annoyed by how indulgent Hannibal was of his rude behaviour — Will knew he was being childish, bordering on insolent, but he couldn’t seem to help it… which only served to irritate him further.

There were just so many people — so many faces to scan, so many eyes to avoid, so many possible ways to be recognized. Every face and body in every street and market was yet another sharp point for him to grate against, his irritation close to the surface and ready to spill. Without an outlet it would usually bubble over in Hannibal’s direction, making Will feel even worse — even more out of control. This had been happening more and more lately, this misplaced anger towards people who had done nothing to him, or at least not enough to warrant his rampant fantasies of righteous retaliation. He hated them for their prying eyes and petty offenses.

 _Don’t lie to yourself. You hate them for not being threatening_ enough _— for not giving you enough of a… reason._

So often Will would find himself lost in memories of that night on the bluff, brooding over that feeling of violence fulfilled, of blood intimately shed — viscerally aching to feel it again, brutal and cathartic, righteous and _radiant_. He would come back to himself, sweat on his skin, breath a little too fast, aroused and appalled — his mind and fists both white-knuckling the lie that they could ever have simply left the violence behind them, that he could ever deny what they had released.

 _You’ve known all along you couldn’t outrun it. You’ve known all along that you wouldn’t forget how good it felt… how good it_ feels _… how it can be… together…_

That tension had sat coiled inside him all day, but finally abated later that evening. Will remembered sitting quietly out on the terrace after dinner and watching the sun go down over the Gulf, the alchemy of the sunset transforming the world into rose and gold. His mind had finally felt pleasantly… still. The view over their little stretch of beach was ringed with vegetation, blocking out any neighbouring properties. There were no boats on the water. It had felt like they were the only two people in the world, and it was blissful. He remembered saying as much to Hannibal… murmuring the words aloud before he even realised he was going to. Catching himself, he had felt the blush rise to his cheeks. Hannibal had told him he looked beautiful. He had blushed even more. When Hannibal had reached for him, Will knew that the hunger he saw flashing in those remarkable eyes would be mirrored just as desperately in his own. They had made love right there on the flagstones and it had been just as miraculous as every single time since their first.

It seemed to Will that the only time he truly felt himself _uncoil_ was when he was home alone with Hannibal — when the rest of the world felt far away and he could pretend they were all each other could ever need. But lately, even his dreams had turned vicious and bloody. More than once he’d woken in the dark, the web of a dream still clinging to him — hot filaments of liberating violence as arousing as they were unsettling. Each time, he would awake insatiably hungry for Hannibal’s hands on his body, rough and tender, reckless and safe. In those transcendent moments, Will could finally allow himself to revel in a desire fulfilled — in what they could be together.

_But all of your desires can’t be quenched by each other, alone. You know what you both need… what you’ve denied yourselves …_

Even here, now, curled against Hannibal’s chest in the dark, frightened and unsure, he could feel the stirring inside him. How the blood had felt on his skin after all this time — hazy memories of blood and breath and flesh — Hannibal’s presence inexplicably permeating it all. Whatever he had done tonight might still be hiding behind the veil, but he knew the demon he’d released had been stalking him all this time, while he had done his best to pretend it wasn’t even there.

_And if the demon that stalks you is nothing but your own shadow? What then, Will?_

He let out a heavy sigh and twisted to face away from Hannibal, quietly grateful to feel his body follow, spooning against his back. Will was exhausted, his body beginning to ache from strain he couldn’t even recall.

He watched the drapery around the bedroom windows billow like ghosts in the breeze, their shadows dancing on the wall. It made him remember getting ready for bed — first undressing and then opening the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one wall of their bedroom. The room was at the back of their single-story villa, and he did this every night to catch the breeze off the water. Hannibal had told him once how much he liked to watch the gauzy drapery move and sway in the moonlight whenever he couldn’t sleep, which was often. So each night Will made a point of quietly folding back the shutters and opening the windows before bed. Will had never told Hannibal that he did it for him — a thought that made his heart hurt.

In his old life, he would never have been able to sleep with those windows open to the world every night. _In your old life, Hannibal Lecter was ‘out there’, not sleeping next to you._ The idea of being concerned for their safety always filled him with a dark sense of nihilistic amusement. God help whoever chose their door to walk through. They’d even laughed about it once, the first night they had spent in the new house — but levity had faded quickly, leaving them with something heavy and unspoken in its wake, something that was becoming all too familiar.

_And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it. Everything you’ve ignored. Everything you still can’t bring yourself to accept. The terror of the truth, and all its consequences._

The fact was, they hadn’t talked about it. Killing. For all their endless, intimate, raw days and nights since the fall… they had never really talked about it. Those first long weeks, stringing into months, holed up and recovering from their injuries, Will had made it clear to Hannibal that while he may have surrendered his body and mind and soul to what they had become, he still wasn’t ready to discuss how they would be… together… like that, and miraculously, Hannibal had eventually let him be. Will knew Hannibal shared a deep understanding of how it had felt for him to kill Dolarhyde — how it had felt to kill him together. _Radiant_. But Will had stubbornly refused to be confronted by what that would mean for them, moving forward.

Instead they had chosen to act as though the fall had given them a clean slate, washing away the doubts and betrayals of the past with the decadence of new discovery. Revelation piled upon revelation as they had found each other anew and in ways that Will had never dared to dream of. He had denied himself one thing but allowed himself another. He had allowed himself to fall in love with Hannibal so completely, his heart felt inadequate to contain its enormity. He had allowed himself to drown happily in Hannibal’s arms. Will had secretly hoped it would be enough — that perhaps such complete fulfillment of one illicit desire could simply drown out the screaming denial of another. Their love had drawn around them like shimmering silk, the cocoon of the cabin keeping them safe from the outside world. Inside that chrysalis they had become something new, something beautiful.

But eventually they had known they would need to leave, to run. Entering the world had felt like wading headlong into a muddy torrent after the gentle waters of a clear stream.

There had been that business with Bedelia of course. Within hours of leaving the cabin, Hannibal had taken him to pay her an unexpected visit, one that Will had been far from prepared for. Instead of going to the charter airport as he had expected, Hannibal had simply driven them to her house without a single word of warning.

“You may stay in the car if you like Will, but I don’t intend this to be quick.” Hannibal had kissed him then, lips lingering on his own like question, stealing his breath… and then he had simply walked straight up to the front door, leaving Will alone to trail along behind him. Separation impossible, he’d allowed himself to be pulled along by the current, trying to ignore the threat of the undertow. _Please don’t leave me behind._

The entire business had felt like a dream, surreal enough that Will’s emotions could not coalesce around a single point, instead hovering somewhere along the vast continuum between fury and fascination, abhorrence and arousal. He had felt… vindicated, yes… secure in the notion that Bedelia had gotten exactly what was coming to her — but it had also left him feeling sullied somehow, jealous and petty, guilty and inadequate. So different from how he had felt on the bluff.  Gone was the exaltation, the righteousness, the joy, the catharsis. He hadn’t felt radiant, sitting there at Bedelia’s table. He had felt diminished — caught in the cogs of Hannibal’s design, his own light swallowed up by Hannibal’s terrible brilliance. Any enjoyment had fallen flat and tasteless in his mouth, his mind full of doubt.

_What if this is all he wants from me… to be slotted into his design, the final flourish of a master’s brushstroke... What will happen if I want nothing to do with it? And what of my own design… what if I want nothing to do with that either?_

_And what if I_ do _want it… what if I want it_ all _?_  

But then they had run, far and fast and unrelenting. From safe house to hotel, from country to country — their forward momentum drowning out the doubt and the fear, the questions Will couldn’t bring himself to confront consistently left one step behind them. Always somewhere new. Always something different. But Hannibal had been his constant. In a world with no home, Hannibal had become his home — his friend, his lover, his partner, his world. He had become his everything, and Will had been delighted to discover how happy that could make him — how happy they seemed to make each other. He had started to ache for a new place where they could feel cocooned from the world once again. It was he who had suggested Cuba.

But lying here now, together in their bed, in the place where they had finally stopped running, Will knew it had all caught up with them. They had finally found a home where the ocean breeze could rustle the drapes in their bedroom and the sun could kiss their skin as they made love on warm flagstones. And Will Graham had finally caught up with himself.

_You murdered someone tonight.  Because you wanted to. Because you needed to. What if you can never accept that? What if you lose the love of your life because you can’t live with yourself?_

Even as he felt sleep coming to overtake him, Will still felt the need to hide, to run, even if that meant into Hannibal’s arms. He rolled back around, nestling into the crook of Hannibal’s shoulder, the scent and feel of the greying curls on his chest comforting him even as tears seeped through his closed eyelids. He had pretended they could outrun their natures, that their hunger for each other could eclipse their hunger for violence — he had pretended he could outrun himself, but now he knew better. Both his guilt and his violence had finally caught up with him.

_Time to stop running. Time to face up to the facts. You’re a killer… in love with a killer. It was true before the bluff and it’s undeniable now._

_What can you live with Will, and what can you live without? What can he?_

Will knew that he couldn’t remember what had happened tonight because he didn’t want to. His body had finally quenched what his tattered conscience had tried to deny him. The floodgates had opened on the bluff and no amount of distraction, not even Hannibal’s embrace, could keep it at bay. The vicious truth of the matter was that he wanted to kill, but he could no more let go of his guilt than he could let go of Hannibal. And while Will worried about his ability to live with himself as a killer, his greatest fear was that Hannibal would not be able to live with him if he chose not to be.

_I can’t lose him._

_I have to tell him… just… not now… not yet…_

And with that, Will’s mind succumbed to the blackness of sleep, heavy words echoing through hours of restless unease.

********************

Hannibal didn’t move a muscle until the rise and fall of Will's fitful breath made it clear that he had finally fallen asleep.

Hannibal had not slept at all that night. Not for one single solitary moment.

This was not the first time Will had done this.

This was not the first time Hannibal had followed Will unseen into the night, bearing witness to a predatory transformation rife with wrath and blood and unspeakable beauty… bearing witness to Will’s remarkable _becoming_. Nor was this the first time that Hannibal had lain awake afterwards in the dark, questioning his choice to remain silent and plagued by uncharacteristic uncertainty.

Will had been resplendent tonight. Hannibal couldn't deny that the chance to witness Will's violence unleashed _nourished_ him in some deep, fundamental way. To see that power uncoil, to see it consume, all hesitation gone — it was beautiful. Fully unleashed, Will was magnificent — his viciousness and righteous wrath released from its cage in a luminous display that would wash over Hannibal like a benediction. The way Will's muscles moved as he stalked, the fluid pounce as he gripped panicked flesh. The way Will's gaze would find him in the dark, somehow always aware of his presence, unseeing but all-seeing. How his eyes, full of joyful fire, would pin him in place right at the moment of truth, when sharp metal parted flesh, the blade slicing across a raised and pumping artery, Will’s grip tightening, pulling back to arch and expose a throat that pumped its last, painting him in jeweled tones of dark crimson. Always that same triumphant smile, rife with exultation and relief, spreading over bloody lips — the heavy body, having expended its offering, finally allowed to prostrate itself in a heap at his feet. Blood and breath fueling a radiance that never failed to fill him with awe. Hannibal knew that in those bloody moments he was feeling something akin to worship, his reverence and devotion and _love_ for this man threatening to burn and consume him like wildfire.

_Radiant._

No, this was not the first time. But this time, tonight, everything was different — this time Will had woken up.

_And he chose to keep it from you._

Will’s consciousness had finally allowed him a glimpse of his true nature for the first time since that transcendent night on the bluff, but instead of coming to him, Will had chosen instead to fold further inside himself, weaving new layers into the warp and weft of the silence between them.

_You have kept this from him also. You have also chosen silence._

This was true, of course… but secrets kept in earnest always seem justified to the one who holds them close. Hannibal knew that there was nothing physically wrong with Will — no, these blackouts were not his brain on fire, this time it was his _conscience_ that threatened to burn him. Will’s mind had been trying desperately to protect him from being consumed by the full brilliance of his becoming.

_But tonight he woke. What justifies your silence now?_

Lying here now in the dark, the contradiction of Will's soft presence beside him, vulnerable now and seeking comfort, his warm skin trembling faintly against his own… Hannibal was besieged by alien doubt. Sighing softly, his breath ruffled Will’s curls against his chest. He knew he should get up, at least to make sure that all the blood had been cleaned, but he couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning Will to his dreams, of leaving him alone with his vicious and unshakable guilt. He wanted to hold him tight until he woke, to comfort him, to wrest him from the demons of his own creation. He wanted nothing more than to tell Will that _it would be alright_. That come what may, there was no need for guilt or fear or denial… that none of it mattered anymore, not now that they were together.

_But every word has consequences… and every silence too._

The first time this had happened, his decision to keep his silence had been made in earnest, so certain he had been that it was what Will needed from him most. He had been convinced that Will still needed space to come to terms with the violence inside him, to decide for himself what place it would have in his life, in _their_ life together. Will had certainly made it abundantly clear during those first few weeks after their recovery that any of Hannibal’s attempts to discuss killing were unwelcome — every effort met with a stony, almost desperate silence, an unbearable coldness that Hannibal could no longer withstand — not now that they had become so… intimate.

More than anything, Hannibal had feared that if he insinuated himself, if he spoke too soon, Will would only accuse him of manipulation and selfish influence. Faced with the only guilt he had ever known, the lies and machinations that marred their past like flyspecks on a mirror, Hannibal couldn’t bear the idea of Will believing that he was still _pushing_. The delicate trust that had burgeoned between them in the months since their fall was as precious to him now as Will was himself — Hannibal was all too aware that he would lose one without the other.

_Trust is a fragile thing, slow to form, miraculous, but torn apart as easily as butterfly wings._

The business with Bedelia had been a… miscalculation. He had thought it would force Will to confront what he had been so stubbornly trying to ignore, but instead it had simply driven that part of him deeper inside, like a shard of glass lodged beneath the skin. He had pushed their fledgling trust to the breaking point that night. When Will had begun his unconscious killings here in Cuba, Hannibal had been afraid that if he confronted Will with what he was doing before his mind was ready, he would push him even further inside… further away… and Will’s trust would be lost forever.

_But our sins of omission betray us. You influence with your silence. You manipulate him still. You can’t help your nature any more than he can._

Hannibal had been faced with a choice. Tell Will about what he was doing, or maintain his silence and allow the situation to unfold as it would. To tell him would have been honest, but it would also have forced a confrontation that Will might not have been ready for, that _they_ might not be ready for. In the end a fierce surge of protectiveness had won out. He had chosen his silence, to shield Will, to protect him from his violence until he was ready for it, to protect _them_ from the burden of old bitterness and accusations while they laid the foundations of their new life.

_You still underestimate his strength… his autonomy. You always have, and it has never failed to be a costly mistake._

Hannibal listened to Will’s breath hitch and sigh in restless sleep, the smell of fear and desire still flooding his senses, mingling with the lingering trace of blood on the air. Feather light, he traced his fingers along the elegant architecture of Will's brow, trying to smooth away his furrowed worry. Will sighed in his sleep, but it was deep and desperate, his arms clinging even tighter. Hannibal pulled him closer still, trying to offer what comfort he could.

_I can’t lose him… not again… not now…_

Hannibal wanted nothing more than to give Will everything he needed for the rest of their lives. But what if Will’s very nature was directly in conflict with itself? Diametrically opposing needs, pushing and pulling him like magnetic poles. To indulge one side would be to starve the other. Will’s conscience and Will’s violence, that inherent duality, would forever work to tear him apart, to tear _them_ apart.

 _And what of your own needs and desires?_ _What can you live with? If Will must turn his back on the violence, what can you live without — the kill or the love of your life?_

He knew that if forced to choose, he would choose Will. He knew it in his bones. But would resentment be the price of denial? Hannibal knew with bittersweet surety that he would always have to fight for Will — that this life together would never sit easy within him. Surely silence had been the safest course to choose…

_But did you not also choose the one path that would allow you to witness his becoming? To let his violence fuel your own unfed needs as one flame can nourish another? It seems we are both still who we are. Our natures did not change that night on the bluff. We are both still creatures of duality. Trust still comes hard._

Hannibal felt for the faint ridge of scar tissue at Will's hairline, his fingertips habitually traveling their own secret nightly pilgrimage, his penance, his reminder of how rash decisions are so often the architects of our own destruction.

_You've made another rash and selfish decision tonight…_

Hannibal had left Will alone in the guest bathroom tonight for only a minute. It had been the only time since Will had first risen from their bed that he had not been watching over him… and Will's mind had chosen that moment to force a reckoning. Hannibal had gone to the bedroom to make sure there was no blood on the window Will had used to re-enter the house. It wouldn't do to have someone see it from outside. Satisfied, he had quickly removed his own soiled clothes and was about to return to wash Will’s body clean of the evidence of what he'd done. But then he had heard Will's panicked footfalls rushing down the hall, rushing towards a culmination long since set in motion, and… well… old habits die hard. He had wanted to see what Will would do, what he would say, how he would tell him… Would there be guilt and fear in Will’s eyes or joy and epiphany like that night on the bluff?

_You wanted him to come to you… you wanted him to need you in his crisis… you wanted to guide him and put him back together… you have not changed._

With barely a moment to spare, Hannibal had quickly gotten into bed and pretended to be asleep. It was a decision he almost immediately regretted as soon as he heard Will's feet pull up short at the threshold to their room, the silence stringing out between them, heavy with things unsaid. Hearing Will’s placating words — _I… just… love you_ — Hannibal had found himself fighting back frustrated tears, face pressed into the pillow, unsure of how to take back his rash choice and suddenly all too aware of how their shared inability to communicate, or to trust, could ultimately destroy them. When faced with Will's inability to tell him what had happened, he knew exactly how damaging his own silence had been.

 _But_ _in love we take leave of our senses._

With a heavy sigh, Hannibal slowly untangled his limbs from Will’s clutches. Even in sleep, his fingers gripped tight enough to bruise. Despite his heavy thoughts, it still sent a thrill through Hannibal’s body, echoes of nights spent together, locked in each other’s embrace, Will’s hands gripping tight around his throat, his very breath surrendered, flesh pressing flesh, his breath eventually returned, Will’s eyes burning with reckless desire, his wordless demand for Hannibal to claim him for himself. They consumed and were consumed in turn, an eternally burning flame. _Reciprocity… in all things._

Hannibal got slowly out of bed and walked to the window. He knew what he had to do, but still he found himself hesitating. He let the gauzy drapery snake between his fingers, taking note of a solitary drop of blood. He had never told Will why he loved to watch these drapes sway in the moonlight — how they cast underwater shadows on Will’s sleeping form which reminded him of _that night,_ of Will’s _becoming_ — cast adrift and clinging only to each other, blood and salt water mingling on their lips... Although that night held guilt and regrets for Will, it held none for him. It had been their new beginning, _their_ becoming. It had been beautiful.

_But we really haven’t changed so much, have we? You will have to leap again. You must commit yourself to his arms once more and risk it all._

_You have to tell him._

Hannibal turned and walked purposefully back to the bed. Sitting on the side, he brought his hand up to smooth Will’s damp curls back from his forehead.

“Will… Will. Wake up, my love.”

Will’s eyes fluttered open, locking onto his own immediately, searching and full of worry.

“Hannibal… I… I’m glad you woke me up… I…”

Hannibal pressed a finger to Will’s lips, sweeping down for a deep and breathless kiss. Will’s lips abandoned his words to devour him with a hunger and desperation he knew mirrored his own. Eventually pulling back to rest their foreheads together, Hannibal took a final deep breath before speaking, filling his lungs before the plunge.

“I know, Will. I know... We have to talk.”

Their embrace was desperate, almost sad, but still fierce — their love would always threaten to burn them both. Will’s face pressed against his chest as they clung to each other on the edge, both trying to collect the courage they needed to leap again, together this time, and hopefully for the last.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, THANK YOU FOR READING! Kudos and friendly comments are magical, and you are magical for leaving them! 
> 
> Come flail at me about Hannibal on [Tumblr](https://thisismydesignhannibal.tumblr.com/) !
> 
> I wanted to also say a huge thanks to Romina and Jamie for their tireless and incredibly hard work putting the Radiance Anthology together. They truly went above and beyond for the fandom, and they deserve all the thanks in the world. I couldn't possibly be more proud to have my work among such talented fannibals, and it's something I will always cherish! 
> 
> If you're interested, we're doing a [Radiance Book Club](https://radiancebookclub.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Come join us to read and discuss together! <3 XOXO


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